iRacing S1 2023: All You Need To Know

Kurupt CDN said:

Looking forward to try the new update when I get home.

Any info on what 9 vehicles and 23 track configurations were added AI racing?
Really enjoying the quality of AI racing so far.

Edit:

HOME› STAFF ANNOUNCEMENTS

2023 Season 1 Release Notes [2022.12.06.01]​

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Alex Gustafson Posts: 159STAFF ›
December 5, 2022 3:38PM edited 8:15AM
The iRacing annual December update is here! This release includes a huge amount of content and upgrades for 2023 Season 1, which officially starts on December 12th! This season update includes three new cars: BMW M Hybrid V8, Mercedes-AMG W13 E Performance, and Toyota GR86. We have also added two brand new tracks: Lincoln Speedway, and Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours. Both the Ford Mustang FR500S and Sebring International Raceway have also received complete art updates for a fresh and modern look. Three new Dirt Road track configs have been added between Daytona Rallycross and Dirt Road, and [Legacy] Phoenix Raceway - 2008. The brand new Active Reset feature is now available to help you repeatedly practice any and all of iRacing’s track sections with only a few keystrokes. Our surface simulations on and off the track have been improved with driving line Track Polish modeling and physics-based soft surface modeling. Dozens more tracks now have Start Zones available and starting grids expanded up to 60 racers! The GT3 class also received tire and aerodynamic updates along with increased mass and engine power; these changes bring performance even closer to their real-world counterparts. A new texture layer has been added to all cars that allow for acrylic clear coats to be added to all custom paint schemes. The New Damage Model is now also in effect for GT3 Class Cars and the Dallara P217. Our iRacing AI have been training all autumn long and are ready to fight you for the podium with nine new cars at 23 new track configs. Bring in the new year with style, and welcome to iRacing 2023 Season 1!


Season highlights include:

• BMW M Hybrid V8
• Mercedes-AMG W13 E Performance
• Toyota GR86 [FREE!]
• Lincoln Speedway
• Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours
• Ford Mustang FR500S - Bumper-to-Bumper Artwork Updates
• Sebring International Raceway - Complete Track Artwork Overhaul
• Virginia International Raceway - 2022 Laser Scan Version, Coming Soon! [FREE!]
• Three New Dirt Road Track Configs: Daytona Rallycross and Dirt Road - Dirt Road Long & Dirt Road Short, and [Legacy] Phoenix Raceway - 2008 - Dirt Road [FREE!]
• Active Reset feature
• Track Polish Surface Modeling
• Soft Surface Modeling
• Start Zones for dozens more tracks
• Starting Grids expanded to 60 for dozens more tracks
• GT3 Class Tires and Vehicle Parameter Updates
• Acrylic Clear Coat custom paint scheme layer
• Series Stats & Standings in the iRacing UI
• New Damage Model for the GT3 Class Cars (Audi R8 LMS GT3, BMW M4 GT3, Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020, Ford GT GT3, Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO, McLaren MP4-12C GT3, Mercedes-AMG GT3 2020, Porsche 911 R GT3) and the Dallara P217.
• AI Racing for nine Cars (BMW M Hybrid V8, Ford Mustang FR500S, Legends Ford '34 Coupe, Legends Ford '34 Coupe - Rookie, Lotus 79, All three NASCAR Classic 1987 Class Cars, and the Toyota GR86)
• AI Racing at 23 Track Configurations (Atlanta Motor Speedway - Legends Oval - 2008, Autódromo José Carlos Pace - Moto, Barber Motorsports Park - Short A, Brands Hatch Circuit - Indy, Charlotte Motor Speedway - 2018 - Legends Oval, Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours, Donington Park Racing Circuit - National, Iowa Speedway - Infield Legends, Las Vegas Motor Speedway - Legends Oval, Nürburgring Nordschleife - Industriefahrten, Road America - Bend, Snetterton Circuit - 200 & 300, Sonoma Raceway - ALL non-Rallycross configs, Texas Motor Speedway - Oval & Legends Oval, [Legacy] Charlotte Motor Speedway - 2008 - Legends Oval, [Legacy] Kentucky Motor Speedway - 2011 - Legends, [Legacy] Texas Motor Speedway - 2009 - Legends Oval)

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woww Nürburgring Nordschleife - Industriefahrten, it 's the tack I wait for AI.....and Brand Hatch indy too....time to renew membership next year.
The main issue is the AI is very long to prepare with all the parameters and skins....

azaralamouri said:

1990's sim is very outdated and they still think they can go on with the forever DLC business model.

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I thought RD was monitoring this kind of pointless comment, but I had seen plenty of them recently.

Blagga said:

I was a member of iRacing for a couple years. Both times a friend bugged me to buy into it. The second year, he even paid for my sub. Over that time I had to buy almost every track and several cars just to race every week with him. They change the schedule very specifically so that you have to buy more than you want otherwise you miss 2-3 weeks or more at a time until the track you own comes around again. I found the racing to suck, the handling of the cars to suck, the graphics to suck and worst of all, the mods and the community to suck. That community will defend their behavior and their useless product to the death. No matter what. I reached out to iRacing to not only cancel my sub, but I made them delete my account. I will never go back to the absurd crap that is iRacing. Most of the pros that have tried it during the pandemic even hated it and talked about how unrealistic it is. Any youtuber that shared that footage was summarily asked to cease and desist by iRacing as it would hurt their reputation. iRacing is hot trash.

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You are not wrong. But since I’ll never know what an actual race car drives like, and I enjoy joining races any time I want and have a bunch of similarly paced drivers around me, I see a lot of value in iRacing. Is it perfect? No, absolutely not. But it works for my busy schedule and I’m happy to pay a little more for that. And the beautiful thing is that I also love AC, ACC, AMS2, rFactor 2, Rbr, DR2, WRC 10, and I play all of them regularly, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Luckily I don’t need to hate one sim in order to like another one.

Blagga said:

I was a member of iRacing for a couple years. Both times a friend bugged me to buy into it. The second year, he even paid for my sub. Over that time I had to buy almost every track and several cars just to race every week with him. They change the schedule very specifically so that you have to buy more than you want otherwise you miss 2-3 weeks or more at a time until the track you own comes around again. I found the racing to suck, the handling of the cars to suck, the graphics to suck and worst of all, the mods and the community to suck. That community will defend their behavior and their useless product to the death. No matter what. I reached out to iRacing to not only cancel my sub, but I made them delete my account. I will never go back to the absurd crap that is iRacing. Most of the pros that have tried it during the pandemic even hated it and talked about how unrealistic it is. Any youtuber that shared that footage was summarily asked to cease and desist by iRacing as it would hurt their reputation. iRacing is hot trash.

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Everyone has their preferences, but I would ask a few questions:

When did you try it? I was "forced" to join as the league I was participating in at the time left PCars and went to iRacing. I liked the league and the members so I gave it a try.

I absolutely hated it. I did not like having to buy tracks and cars. Yes, the physics sucked, the handling sucked. Everything about it sucked. I left the league and found another PCars league.

Now, PCars and PC2 were also hot trash, where the physics sucked. The GRX was fine, but I could give two...effs about GFX as long as I can race.

The second league went to RF2 because we got tired of the problems with PC2. After one season in RF2, which we found wanting for other reasons (the UI and issues with the server being a couple) the league then went to iRacing.

I resisted and did not race with the league for one season. Yet...I really liked the league and updated my sub to iRacing.

This leads me to my second question:

Have you given it a shot in the past two years or so?

I race iRacing almost exclusively. Their physics has improved immensely in the past few years due to input from automakers, race teams and drivers. Most of their new cars are built using the information given to them by the manufacturers, which has had a huge impact on their ability to give us cars that are as close to the "real thing" as possible.

The tire physics, while still wanting, are no longer "glass" and last more than a lap or two.

While I appreciate ACC and other sims, iRacing offers so much more to me, so I stay with it.

Sure, sometimes the racing can be a challenge, but that is found in every single sim I have raced in. At least in iRacing you are placed in races with other racers that match your ability, and shenanigans from other racers can be enforced if you follow the protest rules.

No one is going to convince you that you are wrong, and that is not my intent. I just think that one can pick any sim and other than the sub, can complain about the very same thing you do not like about iRacing.

It is not perfect, but none of the sims out there are.

I was a 5+ years member some years back.
I aborted my membership only because I got fed up by their lousy tire model.
And because most of the "improvements" of it only made it worse (IMO).
But at that time I was pretty satisfied with almost all the other things in iRacing.
Including the price.

If just iRacing had a reasonable "realistic" tire model like rF2 or AMS2 I would gladly come back.
But reading between the lines of many/most of later years reviewers I have concluded that they are just polishing Kaemmers old TM.
And even if you does polish a turd then...

'Active reset' seems a nice idea. (Paying so much for it doesn't )

the_last_name_left said:

'Active reset' seems a nice idea. (Paying so much for it doesn't )

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Just use it for free in the other sims

BrunoBæ said:

I was a 5+ years member some years back.
I aborted my membership only because I got fed up by their lousy tire model.
And because most of the "improvements" of it only made it worse (IMO).
But at that time I was pretty satisfied with almost all the other things in iRacing.
Including the price.

If just iRacing had a reasonable "realistic" tire model like rF2 or AMS2 I would gladly come back.
But reading between the lines of many/most of later years reviewers I have concluded that they are just polishing Kaemmers old TM.
And even if you does polish a turd then...

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The tire model has improved immensely. The "glass" tires of a few years ago, when I first tried it, was the biggest reason why I hated it: You could run one good lap and then the tire was hot trash, forcing you to drive tentatively. Forget it if you were running in an enduro-that was more of an exercise in caution as opposed to attacking the track.

Now, I can drive the car in the manner I always felt they should be driven. You have a couple of laps where the tires must come up to temps and pressures, and once you get there you can attack the track.

I grant that there are issues, such as the infamous "grass" controversy at this years 24 Hours of Spa, but overall the experience is...light years better than it was.

Like I said in my prior post: I am not trying to convince anyone to join-I know many of us had huge issues with the service. I just know that it is nothing like it was when I first tried it in 2017.

I love that I see the rear of my vehicle, wings ect in the mirrors. Seems like a small thing, until I race any of the other sims I have and see nothing...loving AMS2 for the classic car content and tracks, really wish it had iRacing detail in the mirrors. For VR this was an even greater swing of immersion/lack of

I gave a quick go of the latest update.
I really enjoyed the GT3 physics update, tires have much more detail and don't feel like mush anymore.
Seabring looks great with all the new graphics update.....looking forward to those updates being brought to the rest of the tracks.

The new toyota is a fairly fun car and nice addition to the base content.

They added a new smoothing slider to the ffb setting which helps reduce the ffb spikes.

Absolutely loving the AI and built in LFE bass shaker they have implemented.....tho it would be fantastic if they could code it to run multiple rumble motors(ex. Pedals) so I can eliminate simhub and save some cpu resources.


25% of iracing renewals till Dec. 16th
50% off new subscriptions.
Feel free to use my referral link below for anyone interested

DC WOLF said:

i'm curious how good they simulate W13 porpoising

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Depends which W13 is modeled by iR. Will it be the turbmobile from the start of the year? Or will it be the Post COTA W13 with the now illegal front wing?

wow, Sebring looks great, it's one of the tracks that got me into joining iRacing more than a decade ago, good to see it get a new coat of paint.

Downloaded it yesterday. Looking forward to trying it out on more than a test track.

Didn't realize they had added tactile support to it. It's great that they are taking that step.

Since I'm running 8 channels of tactile through SimHub with multi-layer effects, I'm very doubtful they have a full replacement for that, just like the D-Box Haptics are no replacement for Sim-Hub with a solid tactile system, but still it's a great addition and will possibly get more people experimenting with tactile.

Then again I'm not worried about CPU cores running this.

Its hard work maintaining my disdain for this game and also wanting to re-install it...

go ahead, break the cycle, just do it!

am in.. bought a year half price.

tried it in '17 and didn't have the best experience due to marginal internet, the ui and some hardware issues.

after three days straight dabbling in everything rookie, am very impressed despite losing ffb every other race, load times, and some permanent rookie behavior from others.
the mx-5 cup and gr86 are well done and once i figured out how to avoid trouble, am almost out of rookies.
the dirt.. i absolutely love all of it! did a mixed class at wild west in VR and finished 2nd in class, flicking and yumping around very familiar scenery.
the short oval stuff is fun but difficult to improve rating due to hyper-aggressive behavior and random wrecking etc. still fun!

what top 5 cars, circuits, series would you recommend? may ask santa for an iracing gift card this year

RevSome said:

am in.. bought a year half price.

tried it in '17 and didn't have the best experience due to marginal internet, the ui and some hardware issues.

after three days straight dabbling in everything rookie, am very impressed despite losing ffb every other race, load times, and some permanent rookie behavior from others.
the mx-5 cup and gr86 are well done and once i figured out how to avoid trouble, am almost out of rookies.
the dirt.. i absolutely love all of it! did a mixed class at wild west in VR and finished 2nd in class, flicking and yumping around very familiar scenery.
the short oval stuff is fun but difficult to improve rating due to hyper-aggressive behavior and random wrecking etc. still fun!

what top 5 cars, circuits, series would you recommend? may ask santa for an iracing gift card this year

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I have helped a few friends through this bit and usually people are not sure and dont want to spend on lots of content. So one way is to look at a couple of cars you might want to drive and find series that they are in and do a little spreadsheet for what tracks they are on during each week.

If you are lucky you will find that maybe you do series A this week as ita a free track, then series B next week on free track, then 3rd week maybe you have to buy a track to race. You can jump around a bit and then usually if you like it you just end up buying a track whenever you need it because by then you have convinced yourself its just a couple coffees

This week in week 13 is also a good time to buy a car yo may like if its running in week 13 series and run it in races. It's week 13 so the races may not be as great as SR, IR is not being used but you get an idea..

I've been an iRacing member for 9+ years, but I'm done. I won't be renewing my subscription.

They seem to make less popular series fixed setups, which to me is about as unrealistic as you can get (even spec series allow adjustments). My primary series was one of these lesser populated series, but they they made it fixed setup in my region. So it's either race with an astronomical ping, or run their crappy fixed set up. No thanks. Seems like anything that isn't GT3, or NASCAR, gets a fixed setup. (which is fine, but at least keep an open series option).

I joined LFM, brushed the dust off RF2 and ACC, and have been really enjoying RF2.